Actually if you're referring to right at the end there you'd be correct.

#&%$ I miss the evil smiley.

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Here you go, enjoy. You know, for a moment I thought he was talking about Optimus, mostly because that's one of two or three characters from Transformers I care to remember at this point, or have seen recently.

There wasn't enough time to learn all the nuances of programming, he could follow directions well enough when constructing things, but he wasn't nearly as quick about it as some of the other Autobots. The less said about his foray into large scale construction with the Ark the better, at the very least he hadn't set them back by any time but the foreman had forbidden him from returning until the Ark was finished.

The less said about it the better really.

Eventually he'd ventured back into the military half of things, it did give him the most opportunity to do more flying despite numerous Decepticon based downsides. Some testing with other Aerial Bots went along all right, he didn't really fit any one position perfectly though he could fulfill most of them, scouting, point man with a heavy focus on his shielding, demolitions, a spotter with his senors, his stealth system only really worked for flight and not close engagement, and no medical ability even if he'd have really liked to be a combat medic/engineer.

This of course led to an encounter with Warpath's special brand of 'training' once he'd gotten an idea of his bodies ability to maneuver. It has led to the red soldier type setting up five AA cannon emplacements and the phrase:

"Every time you have to shield a hit is one cycle of sludge duty, every actual hit is five cycles of sludge duty, now DODGE!!!"

He was in the air for five minutes or so before he thought to start shooting back. It turned out that sludge duty is cleaning up a sludge byproduct of energon processing. Cleaning it out of processing chambers was a disgusting process that needed to be done regularly and quickly, quick enough in fact that you could not be careful enough not to get filthy doing it. He went through 43 cycles of that, and vowed never to go back even if he had to use armed missiles on someone.

Later on once Ultra Magnus arrived apparently sometime after a chat with Ratchet, he asked how large he an area he could make a spacebridge jump with. Which led to him standing out past the 'kill zone' area away from the walls of the installation in the ruins of Iacon and well away from where he thought Metroplex was. There really wasn't any room for it anywhere else, especially when he might take a chunk of the ground with him.

Ratchet had thankfully slowed down the power draw to something he wouldn't fall over for, it now took about the full countdown to charge the spacebridge drive. The countdown itself expanded when the jump area did. It was strange though, the power draw and timer only seemed to go up as the area of transport expanded and not for distance.

He found out quite a bit during those tests, like how the space bridge had a cool down period, usually the charging time increased by a factor of 60. A minute and 40 second charge led to a hour and forty minutes of cool down, and etc. However he could get the transport bubble up to something that he estimated could let him jump half the Ark if need be, though that took something like a full hour charge, and a 10 day cool down. Or at least that was what the device said he hadn't actually jumped that, there was also the requirement that he couldn't jump anywhere he hadn't been before, or had very precise coordinates to 'blind jump' to.

Magnus' proposed a rescue position, getting to Autobot squads in distress and jumping them back to base. He was honestly kind of giddy in a way, flying really fast, saving people, less direct shooting at people than he thought he'd have to do!

Data Track 7: Advance through data by 17 Mega-cycles.

No plan survives contact with the enemy, he really should have known that. Honestly though he didn't know how ten Decepticon fliers were waiting for his own first flight, they were directly in line with the projected rally point. Initially he'd been going supersonic, wings swept back in such a way he personally didn't think he'd stay aloft like this, still he'd blown right through their formation when they'd risen up to meet him.

Leaving two of the ten in the dust as they others tried to accelerate after him, three more just hadn't made it in time, still left five on his tail in a pseudo dogfight at mach 2. The slower maneuvers as he tried to keep on course and numerous chaff launches to get missiles off of his tail would have made him sweat if he was capable of it while he wracked his nerves.

Why had he thought a solo flight was a good idea again?

Increased difficulty in detection didn't seem like so great a perk now.

He started slowing to a speed he could bring all his maneuverability to bear in even if only for a moment, having five cons chase him right into the rally point would probably get the bots he was trying to save killed.

Wings swept forward locking into position even as he powered into a climb turning his nose towards the gray sky. Another puff of chaff defeated a missile lock, and he corkscrewed bringing shields into line with bursts of gunfire all the quicker. The gunfire paused a moment as the other bots had to close their intakes when the gray skies gave way to the stars of space to run on full internal reaction.

That was the moment to act, flaps and thrusters tilted as one when he started to invert himself as air resistance dropped to nothing maneuvering thrusters finishing up the motion as he transformed. Sensors locking onto the just now maneuvering Decepticons realizing he now had a bead on them as he hurtled ahead, making them fly into his weapon systems. One was mid transformation as the missiles launched and the five scattered in a starburst pattern to avoid ramming into one another. Whirling as they passed him, he brought the gunpod up a quick burst tracking over all of them, nothing that would put them down but that wasn't ever his intention anyhow. The rents in their chassis made decent back through the atmosphere hazardous, hopefully more than they were willing to risk.

Diving down as fast as he could, he changed back into fighter form, barriers lighting up as he descended, the shield deflecting fives shots against his increased decent profile before they tapered off a while before he had to level out. Wings swept back as the mach cone formed around his nose, engines roared and he was through and accelerating up to mach two once again.

Probably going to replace the hard number with exponential. Though honestly I think it's more like 600% The main idea is the charge amount gets knocked up to the next level. A second goes to a minute, a minute to an hour, an hour to a day, etc.

You could just say that the time spent charging is increased by a factor of 60. That fits inside the minute/hour paradigm rather easily. Of course the main problem is i'm fairly certain that cybertronian time-systems aren't even remotely close to those we use.

You could just say that the time spent charging is increased by a factor of 60. That fits inside the minute/hour paradigm rather easily. Of course the main problem is i'm fairly certain that cybertronian time-systems aren't even remotely close to those we use.

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Well I like the factor of 60, as to units of time I tend to go look here, though personally I go something along the lines of:
Click/Nano-klik = less than a second
Cycle = around a minute.
Mega Cycle = around an hour
Solar Cycle = 20 Mega Cycles or one Cybertronian day.
Stellar Cycle = 400 Solar Cycles or one Cybertronian Year.

Anyway I've been trying to leak in bits of earth terminology here and there and the one I had originally thought of was time, well time and cursing. Though I ended up holding off in the time pits because I didn't want to be too confusing.

Skip about a minute forty or so in the beginning to get straight to valk action.

Now, take in account, that he ain't have to worry about squishy pilot. 19 can pull of maneuvers at literally paint stripping Gs and pretty much set battroid to supersonic as new naught to sixty for variable fighters. So yeah, running from those seekers... That was pretty much due to lack of experience.